1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a vehicle drive assist apparatus capable of properly detecting an oncoming vehicle running in an opposite lane when making a turn at an intersection or the like.
2. Description of the Related Art
In order to improve safety during running of a vehicle, there have been proposed a variety of vehicle drive assist apparatuses detecting an oncoming vehicle running in an opposite lane and giving an alarm to a driver or performing a vehicle driving control such as a brake control on the basis of detected information of the oncoming vehicle when the vehicle is making a turn, for example, to the right at an intersection.
For example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2001-101595 discloses an art in which infrastructural systems including road-condition-detecting apparatuses disposed on roads including intersections are installed, and, when making a turn, for example, to the right at an intersection, a vehicle-mounted apparatus recognizes an oncoming vehicle with a road-vehicle communication between one of the infrastructural systems and the vehicle-mounted apparatus so as to give a warning or the like to a driver.
However, the art making use of the above-described infrastructural systems requires the infrastructural system to be installed at each intersection and accordingly a huge amount of fund to be raised for installing a rightward-turn warning system or the like at each intersection. Also, a scheme of actual deployment of such infrastructural systems must be made. Hence, putting the above-described art into practical use so as to be operable on a large scale is difficult.